Watch_Dogs

You get more of Aiden's background in the audio logs. He learned his combat and parkour skills as a kid, going to gyms on the sly, getting beat down. There's an allusion to his multitude of stitches, broken bones, etc. It's all there if you look for it.

As for characterization, there is a fine line to be drawn. Make your character too complex (or too caricatured) and the audience loses the ability to project themselves into the fantasy — it becomes too obvious that you're driving a character instead of immersed in the game. Make your character too "bland" and the audience complains about insufficient characterization.

Revenge motivations are cheap and easy to pull off because everyone can empathize to the extent needed to overcome suspension of disbelief. "Mess with my family and I'll pop your ass" is something we can all fantasize about but seldom get to act on. The game lets us vicariously play vigilante and feel good about it.

edited 3rd Aug '15 10:29:32 AM by Fighteer

Yeah, Damien's logs allude to Aiden being kind of a street punk which is where he got the action skills, then Damien taught him the hacking.

I agree, however, I'd argue that Watch_Dogs' plot isn't built around self-projecting fantasy the way the plot of say, GTA Vice city does. Or Skyrim. The game is built squarely about Aiden and the choices he makes. Because how many scenes we have of people trying to reason or appeal to Aiden, and the player isn't given a choice there. In any cutscene, Aiden makes his own decisions. So if the game is all about Aiden and the path he decides to walk and the choices he decide to make, then tell me more about Aiden, so I know him and I understand him and why he makes these decisions. Don't just shrug and go "because revenge". The only bit where Aiden became close to interesting is at the near-end of the game Where he reveals that killing Lucky Quinn felt good and he defies the whole "revenge isn't satisfying" trope.

Aiden was a street punk? Expand on that. Did he belong to a gang? Was it because as an immigrant he had issues integrating/was discriminated? He was obviously brilliant. Was it a case of brilliant but lazy? Were his parents unable to afford him a good education? We know Ubisoft can do better. We've seen it.

edited 3rd Aug '15 10:37:47 AM by Ghilz

It's really not that difficult a backstory to extrapolate. I've only played about three hours of the story and it's super obvious that he's a former street punk who turned to criminal activity because of a rough home life, specifically a bad relationship with his dad.

And then tried to make up for it by starting a loving family, only to see that ripped away from him via the consequences of his criminal life.

edited 3rd Aug '15 10:52:59 AM by Fighteer

which he hopes to rectify with MORE CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.

What a brilliant idea...

In for a penny, in for a pound... And he resists the lure of overtly criminal activity at first. Well, for the first two missions, and only then if you don't count assault, kidnapping, and murder criminal when it's done to criminals.

edited 3rd Aug '15 11:08:23 AM by Fighteer

Again as Damien's audio logs point out, Aiden is doing the vigilante as an outlet. He couldn't save his niece, so he vents the rage by saving others.

edited 3rd Aug '15 11:12:26 AM by Adannor

Trust me, those criminal activities that you mentioned? I do count those as Criminal Activities. I'm unsure if you were being sarcastic when you said 'If you don't count...'

-Does Criminal Activity as an Outlet-

OH NO! I made myself a target through my awful addiction to criminal activity and put my sister and her kids in danger and got one of them killed! Clearly the solution is MORE CRIMINAL ACTIVITY! BUT THIS TIME, WITH REVENGE AND PSYCHOPATHY!

-Does MORE Criminal Activity-

OH NO! My Criminal Activity has gotten my beloved Sister kidnapped and her 10 year old son has nearly been killed 3 TIMES due to his utter and complete stupidity and unchildlike behavior! CLEARLY I NEED TO DO MORE CRIMINAL ACTIVITY!

-Does EVEN MORE Criminal Activity-

Oh no! I've pushed away my only family and they hate me for the CRIMINAL AND PSYCHOPATHIC BEHAVIOR I have been displaying this entire game despite the insistence to them that I haven't been doing 'that' again.

His behavior keeps digging him deeper and deeper and its still presented as the right solution. I really don't care if he's doing it as an outlet. His niece dying should have been a wake up call that he's been doing awful things and he's WAY over his head. His sister being kidnapped should have been an even bigger slap to the face. And, yet, the end of the game paints his actions as HEROIC despite all the evidence to the contrary. Aiden is an idiot with an extreme disorder I like to call; Inconsistent Characterization.

edited 3rd Aug '15 2:40:32 PM by InkDagger

1)Niece got killed before he started raged vigilante spree
2)Sister got kidnapped because he refused to do things rather than because he did things.
3)He full well realizes that he pushed away his family when they found out about his shit.
4)It's not presented as the right solution.

Your rage out is extremely silly.

He said criminal activities. Not vigilantism. And hacking is a criminal act.

YMMV on that since Aiden actually says it felt good and right to do all this, and the game ends with him fully committing to his vigilantism.

Edit: Can anyone explain to me why it's such a mystery through the entire game WHY Aiden was targeted? He targeted an hote belonging to a well known crime lord. Hotel ownership isn't exactly something that's impossible to figure out. Especially in a town with an all seeing OS who can be easily hacked and has basically no security. Really, finding out who owned the Merlot should've taken 10 minutes.

edited 3rd Aug '15 3:12:27 PM by CobraPrime

That's only a comment about the typical "revenge feels hollow trope". That he personally feels good about murdering a criminal responsible for horrible crimes. This isn't an absolute moral judgement from the heavens.

The only "inconsistency" in the game is between how the plot wants to present Aiden and how the free roam mechanics turn out. If we disregard the failures of the latter, there is consistent picture of Aiden. And that picture simply happens to NOT be a Squeaky Clean Boyscout Who Is Always In The Right. The only morally clean people are his family of innocents and he fails to listen to them.

He did his fixer gigs because he needed money. (Well, presumably. Backstory elaboration ain't a strong point of the game.)
It got his niece killed. He blames himself for this, and he is right to. But he also can't follow his sister's good advice and simply let go. He has to dig in deep and find out who did it.
The actual endangerment of his sister comes from him underestimating just how much of a driven asshole Damien is.
Could he have endangered them without him in the picture? Maybe, but he was sure he covered his tracks well. He even got shown wrong about his track-covering capabilities when Defalt appeared.

For the Merlot secret: he was never sure if he dug up something of Lucky Quinn's or something unrelated. In the middle of the investigation he thought it was Iraq personally that ordered the hit, not Lucky.

edited 3rd Aug '15 3:19:42 PM by Adannor

...Needed money? How? He can hack people by just walking by them. How much money does he need? He can make millions in a few hours.

So assuming there's a Watch Dogs 2, is Aiden salvageable as a main character, or should they ditch him/shove him aside for a new protagonist? I think there should be a Time Skip and WD 2's protagonist is his nephew, driven to follow in his beloved uncle's footsteps until he sees what kind of person Aiden was.

That's under "free roaming gameplay does not match the plot".

Aiden's story is kinda done. Any sequel with him as the MC would be just him starting something new. Or really repetitive "hey somebody found and abducted your sister again".

You know if it would be a nephew's story, it could be very interesting if he encountered opposition from some unknown hacker, later to turn out to be Aiden.

edited 3rd Aug '15 3:48:21 PM by Adannor

I'd prefer T-Bone myself. He's got a personality for one. And a cool background. He's also deeply invested in what ctos and Blume do.

Free roaming gameplay not matching the plot doesn't make it any less inconsistent of characterization. Especially if said gameplay IS filled with dialogue from Aiden acknowledging those events. Its all still apart of the work. Inconsistent or not to specific areas, its still part of his characterization for the game.

And, still, completely illogical. The game never questions Aiden being a Hacker and Vigilante and how that's unhealthy for him (almost an addiction based on some conversations) and his family. The death of his niece is blamed on the assassin and the guy who called the hit... Nevermind that Aiden himself is also responsible as his sister repeatedly points out (and forgives him for which is remarkably mature on her part). His resolution at the end to be a hacker and vigilante to protect people flies in the face of everything that happens during the game proper; he kills HUNDREDS of innocent people and ruins so many lives in the process. I can't remember the exact phrasing, but his end speech sounds like he wants to protect people like Maurice from bad guys... Who is only so physically and mentally damaged because AIDEN allowed him to be tortured into such a sobbing wreck.

Aiden is a complete monster and T-Bone having a DLC to himself fixed A LOT of WATCH_DOGS major issue; having a likable protagonist and a decent plot.

Aiden repeatedly says that he killed her. Free roaming player going on a murderous rampage still does not count for the plot. Your memory on Maurice is entirely wrong, he points out twice, at the conclusion of audio logs^note "no wonder he won't say anything - nothing I could do to him is worse than what he already had gone through" and at the end of the game that Maurice was a complete wreck even before he got him.

Just went back to You Tube to refresh my memory.

Aiden repeatedly says he killed her, but that isn't the same as taking responsibility (He repeatedly denies his sister's request to let things go) and repentance for his actions. Those words are hollow.

I never said anything about going on a murder rampage. I'm talking about how he's against criminal activity, murder, and theft in the plot; yet core gameplay missions require stealing cars, stealing money from random people's bank accounts, murdering random people who are just security guards doing their jobs (How many little girls did her rob of their uncles or fathers?).

"Criminals are the scum of the earth! Except when I do it! Then its ok!"

And, not exactly what I meant. At the end, assuming you spare Maurice (I've never actually seen what happens if you kill him), Aiden says "He's a victim in all of this". And... I can't help but think Aiden had a CRAP TON to contribute to that; kidnapping, beating the shit out of him, torture, etc. He may have been in a bad place prior to Aiden kidnapping him, but what Aiden did was awful and doesn't reconcile well with Aiden's end speech.

Unable to let things go is not the same as ignoring his guilt. You're assigning that he MUST act as a cheery boyscout here, which he clearly is not and never was supposed to be.

Just go back to youtube and listen to Maurice's logs. He's beyond Despair Event Horizon even before Aiden tracks him down. Beating and kidnapping of himself was just a little cherry on top of shit cake that his life was turned to.

edited 3rd Aug '15 5:42:53 PM by Adannor

"Aiden is a complete monster..." do you hear yourself? Seriously, morality in video game universes is not the same thing as morality in real life. It's escapism. Otherwise nearly every video game protagonist is at least a mass murdering kleptomaniac, probably a sociopath, and definitely a person who should be locked up forever for society's own good.

Depends on the game. If its an RPG where you are allowed to be a complete asshat (potentially genocide-happy depending on the RPG), then there's not much fault as the game will almost always acknowledge that the player is being an awful horrible 'Evil/Renegade' person. The game will react accordingly. Games like this typically allow you to create your own player character and give them their own personality and reasoning for their actions. These games are like Skyrim, Fallout, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect.

Effectivly, all of those choices fall on me, the player, to decide and thus being a complete monster is on me and my choice of experiencing the game alone.

The problem with WATCH_DOGS is that Aiden is a character separate from the player and the plot demands that we sympathize with him. But there's a lot of inconsistency between Cutscene!Aiden and Player!Aiden as well as inconsistent morality at play.

Just because Maurice being tortured by Aiden is a 'cherry on top of the shit', doesn't make it any less excusable. Said scene happens before you might have found the audio tapes.

It doesn't matter if you find the tapes or not, the canon is that Maurice was a completely broken person even before Aiden, so your claim that he contributed "a crapton" to that is blatantly false.

edited 3rd Aug '15 6:07:48 PM by Adannor

You're going to tell me that, because a man is already damaged, that kidnapping, torture, and etc are all ok? I don't care what state he's in; that's going to damage some even more. And, if you think otherwise, I laugh at you.

Whatever. I'm going to load up the game now and murder some people. Enjoy vapid moralizing.